Two years ago, I--a man--wrote an article that Mothering Magazine liked, an account of my experience "midwifing" my second son's successful underwater homebirth. Ashisha told me they would like to option it, and probably would schedule it by the end of 2003. Told me I was welcome to shop it elsewhere, too, if I didn't like the wait. I guess I expected they would really use it, and pay me on publication, since they were very happy with it. Never happened. Just the other day, Ashisha told me it had not been scheduled for 2004 either, and I might shop it elsewhere. :cry:
Several years ago, when they ran fiction, I sent Mothering a short story which editor Peggy also liked, and wanted to publish. However, about a month before it was to run, they cancelled it, saying that the subject matter--again, underwater birth--was going to receive negative attention in an article in their mag, and so it would not do to run my story anymore.
So where I'm left is that--although writers do get their articles published--either the staff there are very wishy-washy, or they prefer writing by women, or mothers.

Don't be too upset that Mothering Magazine didn't publish your story. They purchased one of mine in the fall of 2000, ran it in the magazine in the summer of 2001 and then I didn't receive payment until March 2002! It took several emails and finally the threat of hiring a lawyer for them to finally afford the funds to send my check. I was repeatedly told they were broke, but yet they were still advertising a need for new stories on their website and promising monetary compensation for them.

Thank you for replying. It's nice to know I'm not imgining that this mag is troublesome. I have since sent the article to two other mags I found online--through WritersWeekly.com. Have you--OR ANYONE--sold considerable to publications found through WritersWeekly.com?

Eric

I had sent a query to them (Mothering magazine) a couple years ago regarding a homeschooling article and I mentioned a homeschooling mom who I intended to interview. Ashisha said to me, "We like articles such as these to be written by someone actually homeschooling so we will contact the source you provided and ask her for an article." Is this unethical behavior, or what?